Read: Mark 9:2-9 Reading the gospel lesson for today–and I’m writing this on Sunday morning before going to teach Sunday School–I was struck by the parallel to a question I commonly get from Bible study classes. “Why can’t God just make it clearer, unmistakable? Why all this variety and human stuff?” I can imagine the…
John Shuck (Shuck and Jive) found this list here, and as I’m teaching a Sunday School class this morning precisely on who will be saved and how, I find it rather interesting. I would suggest that a group has to have something substantial that is both distinctive and held in common to be cohesive and…
You can find his further thoughts again at Reclaiming the Mind. If you read the first one, you should read this one as well.
This is a first look, before I have read or used the book extensively. I have simply looked through it, read the preface and some introductions, and laid out a plan for reading and study using the volume. I intend to “blog through” rather than simply read and review this volume. See the end of…
This headline caught my attention: Osteens offer hope for today with new Bible. Obviously the headline doesn’t mean what one could construe it to mean; it’s a study Bible, not a rewritten Bible, but the headline still struck me as funny. I do have problems with single themed study Bibles, but that’s another post.
David Ker is concerned about section titles in your Bible. And well he should be. I frequently talk about avoiding reading the “lower half” of your Bible when you study. What I mean by the “lower half” is the study notes that so many editions put at the bottom of the page. Now this is…
Grace is shocking, if you think about it, because by definition someone gets something unearned. But in Calvinism, it seems, grace becomes even more shocking. Adrian Warnock posts a quote from Jonathan Edwards that expresses predestination quite well. You are saved by grace, someone else isn’t. Edwards notes that “although all things are exactly equal…
… about the New York Post “chimp” cartoon. While he and I wouldn’t see eye to eye on many things (though his Greek Grammar beyond the Basics is brilliant!) I particularly appreciate this coming from him. I don’t regard printing this cartoon as responsible, but I want to make sure to note that I think…
The value, of course, is that they provide us with more objective views than eyewitness testimony, for example. There’s a bit of a forensics craze running the country with shows like CSI making the idea of forensic evidence popular and fun. But such shows tend to distort the picture in various ways. To make an…
One of my criticisms of The Message is that it tends to blunt the force of many scriptures, making them more palatable than they are. Now don’t get the idea that I’m a critic of The Message in general. In fact, I think it makes a great contribution to the literature available for rapid reading…